Saadia Zrira is helping women find local solutions to poverty by cultivating aromatic and medicinal plants that are native to their community in the Middle Atlas Mountains for small scale production. Saadia founded the Association for Sustainable Development (ASSID) in 2004 to promote the interests of rural women through income-generation projects that harness their indigenous expertise in local biodiversity, providing new tools and techniques to expand resource production.
Using her academic background in agriculture, Saadia organized an all-female cooperative to cultivate, dry and extract the natural oils and essence from indigenous plant species for production into organic beauty products for sale at home and abroad. The fifty-member cooperative specializes in the production process from start to finish as they own a press, drier, and steel still, and do not solicit the use of intermediaries, thus enjoying a greater profit.
Through ASSID, Saadia has provided over three hundred women with income-generating activities and has expanded their offerings to include literacy courses to reduce poverty and improve the living conditions in rural Morocco. There is also a component of environmental preservation and conservation education that ASSID provides to the local community. By teaching natural resource management and sustainable farming techniques to women and farmers Saadia helps rural communities preserve natural resources and the biodiversity of the region for future generations to enjoy.
Saadia is connecting the cooperative to local and international trade fairs so they can reach a larger market for their cosmetic and medicinal products, helping to improve their economic circumstances through sustainable locally-derived solutions.
To Contact Saadia:
zrira_saadia@yahoo.fr
Tel: (+212) 037 68 66 12